Automation in the food industry is becoming more and more important, both to reduce manual labor and thus costs, but also to increase the yield in the food processing.
An example of such equipment is disclosed in WO2013132068 which describes a cutting apparatus for automatically cutting food products conveyed on a conveyor including at least one conveyor belt. A cutter (e.g. a water jet cutter) is arranged above a gap extending across the at least one conveyor belt and is positioned in relation to the gap such that the cutting path of the cutter extends through the food products and the gap and below the surface level of the at least one conveyor belt. The cutter is adapted to be connected to a control mechanism for operating movement of the cutter along the gap. The gap is formed between adjacent elongated supporting means such as rollers with a fixed internal arrangement, where the adjacent elongated supporting means and the cutter is adapted to be connected to the control mechanism for operating back and forth movement of the adjacent elongated supporting means and the cutter parallel to the conveying direction while maintaining the internal arrangement of the adjacent elongated supporting means and the cutter fixed.
The above mentioned equipment is especially suitable to be used within the fish industry where the part of a fillet with pin bones in white fish may be cut loose and removed automatically.
However, this equipment is not suitable for cutting the remaining part of the fish fillets into portions, e.g. to divide the loin part of the fish fillet into fixed weights pieces.
There is thus a need for a cutting device that is e.g. suitable to be used as an addition to the above mentioned device, or other similar devices, for enabling completing of the food processing, e.g. cutting the fish meat into pieces.